730 things — Day 119 of 365

I want to see how far I get with thinning out surplus belongings — because I wasn't sure I'd even get this far and it surprises me to see how I keep generating stuff, especially bearing in mind that during this time I have also acquired things and swapped something out in exchange each time (or just not kept them if they didn't work out), so more things have left my life than I have recorded.   

Today I am saying goodbye to a couple of spanners.

I notice in myself a farewell to self-image going on. In years past I liked to make things out of scrap wood. I took down the garden fence and made a bed frame from it. Later I added tall legs to it so our puppies had somewhere for their bed underneath. There was still a bit of wood from the fence so I made a set of shelves from it. Someone gave me left over planks and I made them into a cradle for my children — I used a coat hanger as a template to make the rockers. Later, when they no longer needed it, I re-purposed it into a shallow set of shelves, which Grace still has to store spices in her kitchen. I remember her waking up from sleep and looking at me with her beady eyes from that cradle when she was tiny.

And I used to make clothes, and curtains and put hooks into the walls for pictures, and crocket blankets and knit hats and shawls. But now everything is folding down and I no longer make things. I can move on the accumulated useful hardware because I won't be needing it any more. It involves, I think, giving a part of myself away, but I don't feel sad about it. It's like watching the leaves on a tree turn rusty brown and begin to fall in the autumn.